The article is devoted to the study of comprehension of modern legal texts by native Russian speakers. Legal texts are characterized by high formalization, complex terminology and specific syntactic constructions, which complicates their perception and comprehension by non-specialists. The subject of the study is the comprehension of the texts of civil contracts: excerpts a purchase-sale contract, a credit contract, a marriage contract. To assess the level of comprehension of the texts of contracts, the keyword method was used, which allows identifying the main lexical units reflecting the content of the text. Informants (60 people) were shown excerpts from the texts of contracts and asked to determine the type of document and highlight the keywords characterizing its content. The study showed that less than 50% of informants completely correctly identify the type of contract, with the worst recognition of the marriage contract. Analysis of the keywords identified by the informants made it possible to identify the most significant semantic groups of keywords associated with the subjects, objects and terms of contracts. It was revealed that, when highlighting keywords, informants primarily focus on the subjects and objects of contracts, while the rights and obligations of the parties attract their attention less often, which may indicate a low level of legal literacy of informants perceiving the text. Semantic analysis of keywords demonstrated differences in the perception of each type of contract, reflecting the specifics of these contracts. The study confirms the effectiveness of the keyword method as a tool for analyzing the comprehension of legal texts and identifying difficulties in their perception.
legal text, comprehension of legal texts, civil contract, keyword extraction method, keywords, keyword set.
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